Thursday, December 31, 2009

New Year's Eve is a good time to reflect back on the past year and going through some of our favorite entertainment pastimes. There's still a number of movies, albums and books I want to check out but here are some of my favorites of those that I DISCOVERED in 2009 (as some of these came out before then) and in no particular order.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

So here's the final colors for Uncanny X-Men #520 which Greg Land drew the interiors for (Greg did the cover for my issue, #519, and so in return, I drew the cover for his issue). I also did the cover for the March issue, Uncanny X-Men #522, alas, I'm not drawing the story. I return to the interiors with the April issue, Uncanny #523, which is part of the "Second Coming" crossover.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Dark Horse Comics has just released a new collection of "Star Wars The Thrawn Trilogy" which features all 3 miniseries (a total of 420 pages) with the first volume featuring the art of Olivier Vatine and Fred Blanchard, the 3rd volume the late great Edvin Biukovic and the middle volume with art by me and Kevin Nowlan and under theepic covers of Mathieu Lauffrey. I'm a life long Star Wars fan and I took a year off from Marvel Comics for the chance to draw this miniseries. It was a really labor of love for me and I was very happy with how with how it turned out.

You can get this book right now at Amazon for $23.37 - a heck of a deal-

So, here's Matt Fractions page description with my thumbnail sketches all over it. I had a pretty good idea of how this page would look - just a matter of which way to tilt some of the panels.

Next is the partially finished page where I'm trying to nail down Emma's facial expression. Matt wanted to go with a Fellini feel to this - thus the 8 1/2 scaffolding in the background of panel 2 and Scott's Marcello Mastroianni inspired hair, glasses and suit. It was a fun change.

Scans of most of the pages can be found in the Files section of the Yahoo Groupand in the Store of terrydodsonart.com. All originals are black and white ink illustrations on 11 x17" bristol board (except the cover (13x19" bristol)).

Friday, November 6, 2009

This is a pretty straightforward talking page with the focus on Cyclops and Pixie - the trick was creating a page showing all the numerous X-Men and not spending forever drawing them all - as we only needed to know that they were in the scene not the focus.

The bikes were fun to draw - I used a version of the bikes I drew the X-Men drawing in one panel of Uncanny X-Men 500.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

OK, so here is the Matt Fraction page description and my little thumbnail sketch of the page. I had a pretty good idea of what this page would look like based on the description and so stuck pretty close to my initial sketch.

So I went through and drew all the figures first with the perspectives roughed in and then finished up the backgrounds last.

I had to draw Psylocke in a new "X-Men" wetsuit. After I drew her in the pencil stage with an open leg suit - I decided if she was going to be in the SF Bay she would need a full body suit so I added that before Rachel inked the page.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

So here's the pencil version of the cover. It was drawn on 13 x 19" 3 ply Strathmore Bristol Board with a Prismacolor Col-Erase Light Blue Pencil and a Staedtler HB Lead Holder. After this was scanned, I redrew Wolverine's face (as it seemed too small) and added a more detail in the background (to give you more of the feel of a New York Subway and more of lighting/atmosphere) which you will see in the inked version.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The first drawing is a 4x 5" sketch done in my sketchbook with blue pencil, and a black Pitt pen.

The second drawing is the cleaned up scan ( in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom Tablet) that is then turned in a blue line drawing that I print out and

The third drawing is worked up over that blue line print out at the same 4 x 5" size

The fourth drawing is the scanned and cleaned (in PS) version

The final color sketch is the result of drawing and coloring in PS and getting the cover proportions dead on. This is the version that is sent off to Marvel for approval. You can see how it turned out from there below!

Monday, September 28, 2009

Here's my pencils and Rachel's inks for this cover. The artwork is done on 13 x 19" Strathmore 500 Series 2 Ply Bristol Board and the tools are the standard ones. As I mentioned before I will post the final colors for this (as soon as I'm happy with them!).

Thursday, September 24, 2009

This is the cover for the What If House of M/Spider-Man coming out in December. I only did the pencils - it is being computer painted by someone else. However, Rachel is inking it for fun now, I'll post that up when she finishes it up!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

I drew about a 1/3 of the final part of the Dark Avengers Uncanny X-Men crossover and will be posting the artwork and original art list soon. My next issue of Uncanny X-Men will be #518 and out in December. TD

Friday, August 28, 2009

I "should" be at my table (P31) in Artists Alley at 4pm on Friday to start taking a commission list before the Sketch Duel at 5pm and hopefully back to the table between 7-8 PM before my final signing at Marvel at 8-9pm.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Here's my drawing for the Wolverine 100 Project featuring Wolverine and X-23. The drawing was done with pencil, Pitt and Copic Markers on a blank-cover Wolverine : Weapon X #1. This will be featured in the Wolverine 100 book and will be available for auction. More details at-